


Impossible

by Amalveor



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:29:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25688104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amalveor/pseuds/Amalveor
Summary: Romana attempts to negotiate her relationship with the Doctor. The Doctor, meanwhile, remains totally oblivious.
Relationships: Fourth Doctor/Romana II, The Doctor/Romana
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	Impossible

“This is impossible!”

Honestly, here he was trying to perform some delicate rewiring and something saw fit to disturb him. He swatted at it and succeeded in coming into contact with a small, smooth ankle. He used his grip on it to aid his head and shoulders forward out of the panel in the wall and sat up to face the owner.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I said, ‘this is impossible’,” Romana replied, a somewhat strange expression on her face. Likely due to his hold on her ankle he thought, and let go.

“Nonsense! It’s perfectly possible. I’m wiring the esennt regulator to the DFA control so whenever we materialize the console with show us that…”

He trailed off, distracted. Romana was flapping a hand somewhat violently at him, “Yes, yes, I know that Doctor. I meant _this_ ,” a second hand joined the flapping but with more direction this time, gesturing back and forth in the air between them. “ _This_ is impossible.”

“Aah,” he exclaimed, understanding. “No. You see, I did something terribly clever. I rewired the atmospheric controls so we have a breathable atmosphere _and_ access to the DFA.” He beamed at her, expecting praise for this. “You’re perfectly safe.”

“No. Not that!” She stopped waving and put her hands on her hips. “Oh, do get up, Doctor. It’s awfully difficult to talk to you down there.”

The Doctor gave a longing look to the panel in the wall with strings of wire protruding haphazardly from it, then back to the stern angle of Romana’s elbows and got up. “Right, now if you would care to enlighten me as to what exactly is impossible I can get back to the very alterations you have been calling for since you arrived.”

“ _We_ are, Doctor. _We’re_ impossible.”

“Oh, I don’t think so! Improbable perhaps. Yes, I rather like the thought of being improbable, but not impossible.”

“No, not- Oh do stop being so difficult!”

“Difficult?” He ran a hand through his curls, pushing them away from his eyes in order to look suitably confused at her. “I thought I was impossible, not difficult. If you keep mixing definitions I shall get terribly confused.”

“ _You’re_ difficult,” she clarified with a sigh, “ _We’re_ impossible.” Then she paused as if stopping to consider her next words before continuing, with some difficulty. “We bicker Doctor, and hold hands and sit at tables-for-two on pleasure jaunts to Paris and-“

“Well it would hardly be a very effective use of space to sit us at a four person table, now, would it?” He grinned toothily at her.

Romana ignored him. “We do all these things and yet our relationship…” She had started to wave her hands between them again. So that was what that gesture was meant to signify, it seemed it might have been easier for her to just explain that in the beginning. “We’re simply…. Doctor, we’re just…”

“Impossible,” he said helpfully, making it sound like a grand pronouncement come at just the right moment.

Her expression was unreadable but her right arm twitched forwards as if she might consider hitting him. The Doctor eyed it suspiciously. “I was going to say,” she continued, “that out relationship is, despite signs showing otherwise, completely platonic.”

“Aah…” he said quietly. “That very much depends on the definition, of course, it being an English word. Not from English of course, Plato wasn’t English. He could have been mind you, terribly nice chap. And he didn’t coin the term, that was much later, and in French. It’s changed meaning several times since then. Humans do so like to change what they mean, don’t they? Turn up in the wrong century and say so much as ‘beetroot’ and sziip!” he gestured across his neck, moving his head in the opposite direction and causing his hair to flop to one side, “‘Off with your head!’ Just like that. No cup of tea, or a chat about it, or a friendly court appearance first…” he trailed off looking confused in the direction of his companion. “What was I talking about?”

“The definition of platonic, Doctor,” Romana prompted with exasperation, looking like this wasn’t going quite the way she had hoped.

“Aah yes,” he started before she stopped him, stepping forward and putting a hand across his mouth with all the gentleness of a kidnapper silencing a victim.

“I meant,” she said quietly, close to his ear, “that we’re not having sex. And that I should very much like to change that.”

The Doctor’s mouth moved against her palm, attempting a reply to this, but she held firm. She shushed him, a quick hiss of air, and then released him, gently. 

“Oh,” he said, because he really wasn’t very good at staying quiet, especially when he was being told to, “Well why didn’t you say so?”


End file.
